Death sentences for Xinjiang attacks
Print Edition
TWELVE people have been sentenced to death and dozens of others given long prison terms for terrorist attacks in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that killed 37 people in July.
The Xinjiang government said 59 terrorists were gunned down by security forces in Shache County in the region’s far south, while 37 Han and Uygur civilians were killed and another 13 civilians wounded in the July 28 attack on a police station and government offices in the county.
Authorities said that the victims met their deaths when knife-wielding attackers staged assaults in two towns.
The incident was the bloodiest in Xinjiang since rioting left around 200 people dead in the capital Urumqi in 2009.
The Intermediate People’s Court of Kashgar Prefecture yesterday found the accused guilty of a variety of crimes, including terrorism, murder, kidnap and making explosives, according to a statement on the Xinjiang government’s news website www.ts.cn.
Aside from the 12 death sentences, 15 attackers were given suspended death sentences, nine got life in prison and another 20 sentences ranging from four to 20 years.
They had set up road blocks and dragged out some of their victims before hacking them to death, the court said.
China Central Television ran footage from the sentencing on its evening broadcast, showing several defendants standing in court wearing bright orange prison vests and with their heads shaved.
Prosecutors showed images of large vehicles and axes they said were used in connection with the attack.
The sentences are the latest in the “strike hard” campaign against violence in Xinjiang.
Last month, a court in Kashgar sentenced two people to death for killing the head of the country’s biggest mosque.
The imam, Jume Tahir, was killed after leading morning prayers on July 30, two days after the Shache County incident.
Another three people were given death penalties earlier in September over a mass stabbing that left 31 people dead in the southwestern city of Kunming in March.
In August, courts announced the execution of eight people for terrorist attacks, including three who were found guilty of masterminding a attack in Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square in October last year when a car was set on fire.
Violence in Xinjiang has intensified in recent months.
In May, 39 people were killed, along with four attackers, when terrorists ploughed two vehicles through a market in Urumqi and threw explosives.
In the latest incident, a pregnant Uygur policewoman was stabbed to death by two assailants in Xinjiang’s Pishan County last Friday.
The attackers, who were mounted on a motorcycle, used sharp weapons to “cruelly attack and kill” the policewoman, China Central Television said on its official microblog.
CCTV cited a colleague of the policewoman as saying she was two months pregnant.
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